Bullis Charter School uses design thinking and engineering projects to teach STEAM concepts to young students. Teachers guide students through the engineering design process of defining problems, ideating solutions, prototyping, and testing. An example project had students build a LEGO wall to keep a toy horse named Happy safe after he kept leaving his yard. Students had to consider factors like the wall's height, length, strength, and affordable materials. The presentation provided additional resources on engineering standards, design thinking methods, and literature connections to support hands-on STEAM learning for K-2 students.

1. Design Thinking and Engineering for Young Students
Lynn Reed
Makerspace Director
Bullis Charter School
Jessica Lura
Director, Strategic Initiatives and Partnerships
Bullis Charter School
Slide Deck at http://bit.ly/BCSsteamK2

2. Bullis Charter School
• K-8 Public Charter School
• 720 Students
Our Mission: Bullis Charter School offers a collaborative,
experiential learning environment that emphasizes individual
student achievement. As a model of educational innovation, BCS
inspires children, faculty and staff to reach beyond themselves to
achieve full potential. Using a global perspective to teach about
the interconnectedness of communities and their environments,
the Bullis Charter School program nurtures mutual respect, civic
responsibility, and a life-long love of learning.

3. Education is Not the Filling of a Bucket but
the Lighting of a Fire (Yeats)

4. Spark Students’ Imagination & Empower Them as Learners
• STEAM Strand
• Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics
• Focus on Collaboration, Communication, Critical Thinking, Creativity
• Use of Design Thinking and Project-Based Learning

5. Design Thinking
• A creative problem-solving process
• Includes d thinking dispositions
• Learn fast
• Risk taking
• Growth mindset
• Creative confidence
• Includes d thinking mindsets
• Show, don’t tell
• Radical collaboration
• Bias toward action
• Culture of prototyping
• Mindful process
• Human-centered

6. Engineering

7. Design Thinking - Help Happy the Horse
Student Pages for
Activity (PDF)

9. Empathy: What does Happy like?
• Carrots
• Shade
• To be brushed
• Water
•Hay
•Jumping
•People
•Dogs

10. Empathy: What doesn’t Happy like?
• Mud
• Wind
• Flies
• Tumble Weed

11. Things that Happy
likes
Things that Happy
doesn’t like
Carrots
Shade
Grass
Hay
Water
Toys
People
Dogs
Flies
Mud
Dirty Water
Tumble Weeds
Define

12. What does Happy need? Draw at least three of your ideas.
Ideate

13. Chose one idea
Draw a circle around it.

14. Prototype - use up 10 LEGOs to build your
idea

15. Test
Share your idea with a
partner.

18. Engineering
Keep Happy Safe

19. The core idea of engineering design includes three
component ideas:
● Defining
● Designing
● Optimizing

21. Build a Wall to Keep Happy Safe
Student Pages for Activity
(PDF)

22. Happy has been leaving his yard and
crossing the street to eat his neighbor’s
flowers. It is dangerous to cross the
road and the flowers make him sick. The
neighbor likes his flowers and doesn’t
want Happy to eat them.

23. Define: Height
● Happy likes to look out on the street
● Happy can jump as high as 3 centimeters
● Happy can’t see over anything more than 4
centimeters tall
● A LEGO brick is _______ centimeter high
The wall should be __________ centimeters high.

24. Define - Length
● The gap between the house and fence is 15
centimeters.
● Happy can fit through a 2 centimeter or larger
gap.
The wall should be at least __________
centimeters long.

25. Limiting Factors - Materials
● All bricks ( big, small and medium size)
cost one dollar ($1) each
● Happy’s family has budgeted twenty
dollars ($20) to purchase the bricks
The wall can contain no more than
___________ bricks

26. Limiting Factors
● Happy likes to push against things with his
head and knock them over.
The wall must pass the ______________________
___________________________________ test.

27. Advice
You can use any Lego & Duplio bricks
Where to get: families donate old legos, Craig’s List
Choice/Extend:
Students can work with a partner
Teacher can create models to show as examples
Extensions:
6th grade ancient history
Meets NGSS & Common Core Standards

28. Literature Connections: Engineering & Inventing
• Rosie Revere, Engineer (Andrea Beaty)
• Marvelous Mattie: How Margaret E. Knight Became an Inventor (Emily Arnold
McCully)
• Violet the Pilot (by Steve Breen)
• Papa's Mechanical Fish (Candace Fleming)
• Awesome Dawson (Chris Gall )
• If I Built a Car (Chris Van Dusen)
• Galimoto (Karen Lynn Williams)
• George Crum and the Saratoga Chip (Gaylia Taylor )
• The Most Magnificent Thing (Ashley Spires)
• Oh No! Or How My Science Project Destroyed the World (Mac Barnett)

29. Resources
Next Generation Science Standards
http://www.nextgenscience.org/next-generation-science-standards
K-2 Engineering and Design Standards
Design Thinking
d school (Stanford): http://dschool.stanford.edu/use-our-methods/
How to Apply Design Thinking in Class, Step by Step (Mindshift)
PBS Kids Design Squad
HFLI Elementary School’s K-5 Scope and Sequence for Design Challenges
IDEO’s Design Thinking for Educators Toolkit
Engineering and Making
Engineering is Elementary website (includes curriculum, after school activities, and PD)
How to teach Project-Based Engineering to Students
Teaching NGSS Engineering Design Through Media (PBS Learning Media)
Agency by Design website
STEM/STEAM
8 Videos to Get Girls into STEM (Edutopia, 5 minute film festival)
PBL and STEAM Education-a Natural Fit (Andrew Miller, Edutopia)
10 Innovative Ways to Bring STEM to Schools (Mindshift)

30. Reflection/Feedback
Help us become better presenters by
completing our feedback survey-thanks!
http://bit.ly/bcsk2survey